VMware’s Update to Mr. Hellwig’s Legal Proceedings

VMware is pleased with the February 28, 2019 decision of the German appellate court in Hamburg to dismiss Mr. Hellwig’s appeal and let stand the regional court’s decision to dismiss Mr. Hellwig’s lawsuit. VMware did not seek out this litigation, nor did we believe it was in the interests of the parties involved or the broader Linux kernel community. VMware continues to be a strong supporter of open source software development and remains willing to engage in a dialogue to address any issues or concerns from the open source community.

We hope and expect that this litigation is now behind us. With that in mind, we are pleased to share that, for reasons unrelated to the litigation, VMware has been actively working on a multi-year project with the goal of removing vmklinux from vSphere, and hopes to accomplish this in an upcoming major release.